Khawla Abu Saleh
Khawla Abu Saleh at the easel, Dubai

Khawla
Abu Saleh

Visual Artist · Conceptual Installation Artist
Dubai, UAE

Practice

Every work begins with structure, built before anything else and determining what follows. Across oil painting and sensor driven installation, these structures make relation, memory, and time perceptible, and hold identity as something legible under certain conditions and provisional outside them.

About the practice

Work

Painting · Installation

Painting · ROSE Series

ROSE IV

ROSE IV

2026 · Oil on canvas · 135 × 106 cm

 ROSE III · Orbiting Flower

ROSE III · Orbiting Flower

2026 · Oil on canvas · 140 × 120 cm

Paintings shown to scale relative to each other.

Dance of Horizons, interactive kinetic installation, 2025 InstallationDance of
Horizons

2025 · Interactive kinetic installation
Sikka Art and Design Festival, Dubai

A rotating sun and moon mechanism changes speed in response to the viewer's proximity. Developed in the Reality Art and Tech Collaborative Program with Dubai Culture.

View the work

In the studio

ROSE V · in progress
ROSE V, detail, in progress
ROSE V · detail
ROSE V, detail of hands, in progress
ROSE V · detail
ROSE V on the easel, palette in the foreground
ROSE V · on the easel
ROSE V, hands at an earlier state
ROSE V · earlier state

In development

Research

Ashes of the Becoming

Interactive kinetic installation. Fragmented elements rise from a field of sand, ash, and charcoal and align from one vantage point. Proposal selected for ISEA 2026 through the Reality Art and Tech collective.

2026, proposed

Observing the Observer

Interactive installation. A geometric mask before a segmented mirror. The mask's gaze reverses onto the viewer. Proposal selected for ISEA 2026 through the Reality Art and Tech collective.

2026, proposed

The Crossing

Large scale outdoor passive installation. Two parallel aluminium layers hold a single image between them, resolved from one point along the viewer's path.

2026, proposed